Hi all, the black plastic on the 205 si is looking a little tired and I’m contemplating colour matching it with the rest of the car like the 205 Rallye. Has anyone done this and have experience with products and techniques (prep, adhesion promoters, etc) The bumpers on these are textured and from what I understand the rallye was smooth (?) so do I need some sort of low fill product that I can sand to smooth it out? There’s also a small crack in the rear that will need patching so I’m assuming thisll need some sort of fibreglass/patch repair. TIA
Painting a 205 plastic bumper
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
No expert but promoter is only used for fresh plastics before first painting.
If it has paint already, sand back to smooth off and prime with high build 2k. The rest is normal procedure of sand fine, clean and top coat 2k. Preferably in a booth
If it has paint already, sand back to smooth off and prime with high build 2k. The rest is normal procedure of sand fine, clean and top coat 2k. Preferably in a booth
Last edited:
Is it cracked or broken? It's probably the same era and plastic type as my CX. It is a thermoset plastic, so you need to plastic weld any damage and brace from the back. Yes, plastic adhesion promoter, then a plastic primer of some sort .... followed by some heavy coats of primer/filler. The texture isn't so heavy you can't sand it out with spray filler..... I wonder if I posted anything here on painting my cars bumpers? .... its a looooooonnnnnggg time ago. I'll go look.
i'll look later, I'll need to fixup the pictures .... they should be here somewhere https://www.aussiefrogs.com/forum/index.php?threads/quick-paint-job-anyone.31943/
Thanks. I’ve since watched a few more YouTube clips and whilst I haven’t made any physical progress I think I’ve got my head around it. There was a suggestion in one clip to use similar/same plastic (from a donor bumper) to patch it from the back
Thank you. I’ll have a read
you need to work out the plastic type. I plastic welder is used for thermoset plastics. any warpage may come out by heating them in an oven too. Once any damage is fixed, you can use a small amount of body filler to level the repairs.
If you can have a look at the 3M Collision Repair content, especially the 2 sided plastic repairs or cosmetic plastic repairs. No need to identify the plastic you can use a 2part plastic repair adhesive which is the most beginner friendly repair method, just make sure you use the adhesion promotor, this changes the surface energy of the plastic and allows for full mechanical adhesion of the repair material.
One other thing is don’t use a body filler to repair any imperfections, body filler has nowhere near the amount of flexibility as the plastic so will crack. I recommend a flexible epoxy based repair material like the 3M 5887 but most manufacturers have something similar. And again always use with adhesion promotor!
To remove any surface texture just sand appropriately and then prime as normal.
i used plastic filler too. if its the rigid thermoset plastic of the 80's normal body fillre will be fine no doubt. its not really flexible, it breaks before it flexes a lot.
It’s not actually too much about the flexion of the substrate but the expansion rates, body filler is very very rigid when the adhesive used in it’s construction has cured and allows for very little (less than 3%) flexibility. Where as a highly flexible repair material specifically specified for plastic repairs will have 50+%.